Over 100 dead, and the toll is still climbing. The deadly floods in Texas swept through an area full of camping sites and Christian youth camps, and people died because they didn’t get any warnings.

The thing is, the counties involved had been discussing buying flood warning systems for years — a network of sensors that would set off sirens if the river waters were rising at a dangerous rate. That sound sensible to me. We’ve got tornado warning sirens all over where I live, and I’d be glad to get a noisy alert to wake me up if dangerous weather was bearing down on me. The Texas county commissioners were discussing this threat back in 2016.

COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: You know we had a baby flood a couple weeks ago, a month or so, whatever it was. And I keep hearing these reports of the old, old system, and I know we’re not going to deal with that though. Expect that to be gone where the Jones call the Smiths, and the Smiths call Camp Rio Vista, and Rio Vista blah, blah, blah, along down the line. But it’s still there and it still works. The thought of our beautiful Kerr County having these damn sirens going off in the middle of night, I’m going to have to start drinking again to put up with y’all.

Except it didn’t work. They didn’t install any sirens. What saved some people was that an old couple saw the rising waters and drove around honking their car horn.

But they debated this same thing in 2017, and again decided they didn’t want any “damn sirens.”

COMMISSIONER MOSER: So we’ve talked about, you know one of the things we said sirens and we said we don’t want sirens, too many many people said they did not want sirens when they had these — when we had these gatherings. Code Red, and I don’t know if Dub wants to chime in on this, but Code Red is the same that’s going to get information to a lot of people; not to everybody, okay. One of the things that we’ll do is identify a point of contact in all of the camps, we won’t communicate with everybody in the camp, but we have a point of contact at the camp so that they can disseminate people within — to people within the camp, like during the summer when kids are there, or to RV parks. Now, if the RV parks want to have a siren themself when something goes up that’s up to them. That’s not part of our thing. So getting the information to the public is the end item of this whole thing. The first thing is sense a flood, then communicate that information to the local authorities, to the right authorities, and then for them to have a system by with which to disseminate the information to the public.

In 2021, they argued some more. They had over $5 million in federal relief funds, but they didn’t want to spend Biden’s money. So they did nothing.

Resident: Are you accountable to anyone for how you spend it? Or is it a, kind of, a reward and shows your support for this particular program? It’s not free money. Being present as we talk. How do we know this? Immediately. Unless you want it on the COVID lies and vaccination pressure, you have to send it back. Those are heavy strings. And those are strings. The deep state harangue and vilified President Trump for calling COVID for what it was and then suggest responses that were non-draconian, and then when Biden took office, the leftist government took its gloves off. It has lied and lied more about this COVID — about COVID.

The temptation is great, you’re accountable, and we would like to know where your allegiance is.

Resident 2: And I’m here to ask this Court today to send this money back to the Biden administration, which I consider to be the most criminal treasonous communist government ever to hold the White House. And Kerr County should not be accepting anything from these people. They’re currently facilitating an invasion of our border, and we’re going to support these people? So that’s what I have to say. Thank you.

Resident: I happen to know that there is no such thing as free money. It’s never government-funded; it’s tax-payer funded. So they’re taking our money and they’re putting strings attached to it and then they’re giving it back to us. And they’re going to get their foot in the door in this county. We don’t want their money. I feel like the people have spoken and I stand with the people. Thank you for your time.

I think we can all see how the right wing has poisoned the minds of the people. The Biden administration was the most criminal treasonous communist government ever to hold the White House? These people are demented and delusional.

So the county decided to hang on to the money (sending it back might mean New York or California would use it!) and dawdled and refused to do the simplest, most sensible thing.

JUDGE KELLY: And GrantWorks has been very helpful in — in getting us focused on what colors between the lines and what doesn’t. As of last Thursday, when I got a call from Bonnie White telling me about this — the problem that y’all were going to present at the meeting, I went and got on the telephone to their Senior Vice President from GrantWorks. And there — there are discussions that they want to have with us and so we want to sit down and listen to them. And we want — we want you to hear them, too. Because you’re the public. But we — we need to know and get very comfortable with where we are with this grant before we start taking that money. And the claw back was the first thing. As far as where that money sits for the next year or two, my old law partner John Cornyn tells me that if we send it back it’s going to New Jersey or it’s going to New York or it’s going to —

MRS. LAVENDER: Or California.

JUDGE KELLY: — or California. And so I don’t know if I’d rather be the custodian of the money until we decide what we have to do with it rather than giving it back to the government to spend it on values that we in Kerr County don’t agree with. So —

COMMISSIONER BELEW: And any spending of it would have to be done in Commissioners’ Court so you’ll be able to see it and know it.

You might be wondering what Texas senator Ted Cruz was doing. You can guess. He was doing what he always does in the face of disaster.

Ted Cruz has had quite a week. On Tuesday, the Texas senator ensured the Republican spending bill slashed funding for weather forecasting, only to then go on vacation to Greece while his state was hit by deadly flooding, a disaster critics say was worsened by cuts to forecasting.

Cruz, who infamously fled Texas for Cancun when a crippling winter storm ravaged his state in 2021, was seen visiting the Parthenon in Athens with his wife, Heidi, on Saturday, a day after a flash flood along the Guadalupe River in central Texas killed more than 100 people, including dozens of children and counselors at a camp.

This would be an appropriate place to cite a face-eating leopard meme, but I just can’t do it. At least 28 children, innocently enjoying a weekend with other kids, many in Christian-run church camps, drowned in these floods, all because their guardians didn’t want sirens disturbing their sleep, didn’t want to spend money from a criminal treasonous communist government, and they just wanted to hoard money to prevent it from going to California or New York (which they probably also believe are communist states).

Many of those kids were attending Camp Mystic, a Christian all-girls’ summer camp. That one camp lost 27 campers and counsellors. I can’t imagine sending a child to a fun-filled summer camp only to get word later that their body had been fished up out of roiling flood waters, that they’d died in fear and pain, all because some Texas assholes (pardon the redundancy) had refused to make camps on a river with a reputation for flash floods safe.

Parents, you can come pick up your kids’ camping gear. They won’t need it anymore.

Did you know that Dr Phil, that old fraud, had put together a media company called Merit Street Media to combat the “Woke Mind Virus”? And that he partnered with Trinity Broadcasting Network (there’s a combo formed in Hell) to set it up? And that they sunk somewhere between $100 and $500 million into the assets for this company?

No? I didn’t either. Completely missed it. The first I heard of it was this bit of news:

This week, Merit Street also filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Variety reports. At the same time, the company has sued TBN, and accused it of sabotaging the business, the outlet notes. Merit Street claims that TBN has “abused its position as the controlling shareholder” and that, as a result, Merit Street was forced to “pay or incur obligations to third parties in excess of $100 million.”

Not only a failure, but an ugly lawsuit between some awful conservatives, it’s like Christmas in July. The company also says of TBN:

The company further states that TBN provided production services that were “comically dysfunctional. Although it promised the equivalent of the professional facilities and services that Dr. Phil had long relied on when producing his show in Los Angeles for CBS, the supposed ‘first class’ services TBN promised under the Joint Venture Agreement were nothing of the sort. TBN provided screens and teleprompters that blacked out during live shows, an incomplete control room operating out of a truck, an unusable cell phone app for viewers, and amateur video editing software.”

Go Christian, go broke.

Hey, y’all remember when Game of Thrones was a hot show? It had dragons, and zombies, and bloody destructive wars, and gratuitous nudity, and engaging characters, and multiple plot lines that were plummeting forward. Must-see TV, with gigantic budgets!

And then the last season comes along, it’s hot garbage, it betrays all the premises of the previous seasons, closes plot lines with idiot finality and illogical resolutions, and everyone realizes…maybe it was all shallow pretense all along, a series of excuses to justify the next slam-bang event in a long chain of them, and all interest in repeat viewing dissipates, and the show is only remembered as an embarrassment, because of that horrible conclusion.

I am reminded today of another long-running serial that started with grand ideals (FREEDOM!), had heroic battles, vivid, memorable characters, a vast landscape of spectacular scenery, beautiful dreams of a progressive society, and then it ends with a squalid little fart. We discover it was all a lie. We should have known. We started with a fantasy of equality and freedom composed by a team of rich landowners who made sure that the little people would never break their grip on power. We announced that the central theme of this great endeavor was liberty, while postponing emancipation of the horde of slaves we held, and taking over all that beautiful land by genocide of the people already living there.

And now, on the verge of our 250th anniversary, we have put the reins of power in the hands of a babbling loon who wants to deport anyone with a skin color less pasty than his own, who has just passed a bill that slashes the social safety net and enriches millionaires even more, all while his allies shred education and science in this country.

The “one big, beautiful bill”, as Trump calls it, won final approval by the House of Representatives on Thursday, in time for his signature on 4 July, the US Independence Day holiday. In addition to the tax cuts, it will also channel tens of billions in dollars towards immigration enforcement and building a wall along the Mexican border.

To cut costs, Republicans included provisions to end green energy incentives created under Joe Biden, but the bulk of the savings will come from changes to two programs: Medicaid, which provides healthcare to low-income and disabled Americans, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), which helps low-income Americans afford food.

Both programs will face new and stricter work requirements, and states will be forced to share part of the cost of Snap for the first time ever. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates the bill’s Medicaid changes could cost as many as 11.8 million people their healthcare, and the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities forecasts about 8 million people, or one in five recipients, may lose their Snap benefits.

And of course Trump capped it all off with an anti-semitic slur in his victory speech.

TRUMP: No estate tax, no going through the banks and borrowing from—in some cases a fine banker— and in some cases a shylocks and bad people. pic.twitter.com/VHQt3k1U6u

— Acyn (@Acyn) July 4, 2025

I’m sorry, but the finale of this series really sucks. Can I cancel my subscription? Get my money back? I would never have started watching if I’d known how badly the writers and show-runners were going to botch it in the conclusion.

Late last night, I got an alert with the good news that Iran and Israel were going to stop shooting missiles at each other.

US president Donald Trump has announced in a social media post that Iran and Israel have agreed to a ceasefire. On the assumption that everything works as it should, which it will, I would like to congratulate both Countries, Israel and Iran, on having the Stamina, Courage, and Intelligence to end, what should be called, “THE 12 DAY WAR,” Trump wrote on his platform, Truth Social. This is a War that could have gone on for years, and destroyed the entire Middle East, but it didn’t, and never will!

This was on social media, not the news, and was accompanied with sycophants yelling that now, they have to give Trump the Nobel Peace Prize. Also, it was a ceasefire, not yet the end of the war, so it was presumptuous to announce that not only was this the end of the war, but also that Trump was naming the war.

Then, a little later…

Just after 5am GMT, Trump posted to social media that a ceasefire was now in effect, adding PLEASE DO NOT VIOLATE IT! Earlier he told NBC the ceasefire was unlimited and would last forever.

A ceasefire is a ceasefire, so it’s a little desperate to then beg the opponents to NOT VIOLATE IT.

But then I wondered…when did Truth Social become an international news agency, with reporters publishing reports of actual events? It’s just Donald Trump sitting on a solid gold toilet tapping out his fantasies on his phone. You shouldn’t believe anything on Truth Social.

So I was not surprised this morning that Israel and Iran continue to exchange fire despite Trump’s ceasefire declaration.

Air raid sirens sounded in northern Israel at about 10.30pm, in response to what the Israeli military said was an Iranian missile launch, about two and a half hours after the ceasefire was first announced. Israeli reports said two missiles had been intercepted. Iran denied launching missiles after the ceasefire but Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, said he had ordered immediate retaliation on Tehran.

“I have instructed the IDF to respond forcefully to Iran’s violation of the ceasefire with powerful strikes against regime targets in the heart of Tehran,” Katz said in a statement. “In light of Iran’s complete violation of the ceasefire declared by the US president and the launch of missiles towards Israel … I have instructed the IDF … to continue the intense activity of attacking Tehran to thwart regime targets and terrorist infrastructures in Tehran, in continuation of the activity that took place yesterday.”

And now Trump is spittin’ mad because now he’s learning that his precious ceasefire and end of the war were built on wishes and farts and are dissipating in the same winds that are blowing away his credibility.

They don’t know what the f**k they’re doing: Trump lashes out at Israel and Iran

Neither do you, Donald. Neither do you.

The World Humanist Conference was scheduled for next year in Washington DC. I’ve been to this conference in Oxford in the past — it’s a good meeting, and I would have planned on attending. I can’t confidently travel abroad anymore because of the fucked up way the US handles security at airports. I’m even reluctant to do much domestic travel.

If I’m unwilling to travel, the shoe is also on the other foot — who would want to travel to the repressive hellhole that the US has become? So I was not surprised to get this email from Jen Scott of American Atheists.

As the Board Chair of American Atheists, I’m writing you today with some difficult news: Due to escalating threats to civil liberties, human rights, and international relations under the Trump Administration, the board and staff of American Atheists have withdrawn our organization as host of the 2026 World Humanist Congress, originally scheduled to be held next August in Washington, D.C.

The Board of Directors takes seriously our duty to ensure the safety of our members and the continued ability of American Atheists to carry out its mission. This decision was not made lightly. It comes after a thorough evaluation of our organization’s ability to successfully host and safely execute an event of this magnitude in the coming year, given the new and yet unfolding risks posed by the escalation of religious nationalism and the erosion of human rights in our country.

In just its first six months, the Trump Administration’s actions — including the deportation of legal immigrants, detentions and refusals of admission to visitors of the United States, and travel restrictions — have created an environment that is not only incompatible with our values but also inhospitable to members of our global secular community.

Already, our nation’s reputation abroad is plummeting. And fueled by fear of being detained, surveilled, or harassed at our borders, so, too, are the number of foreign arrivals. A significant majority of the potential attendees we surveyed expressed apprehension about the political climate and a reluctance or unwillingness to travel to D.C., including U.S. residents and key volunteers.

Our board and staff are also acutely aware that executive orders retributively targeting private and nonprofit entities the administration views as disloyal to its agenda present an existential threat to American Atheists, our members, and our partner organizations.

Here’s the sobering truth: Under this administration, it is impossible for American Atheists to guarantee or even make reasonable assurances regarding the admissibility of international guests from key regions of the world, nor is it feasible for us to ensure the security of those who are granted entry to the United States or to mitigate against the still unknown events of the coming year.

The totality of these circumstances and the reality of this moment is deeply troubling. We are witnessing the dismantling of foundational freedoms and the weaponization of the state to stifle dissent, suppress civil society, and silence voices like ours. The repressive actions of this regime not only obstruct our ability to gather in peace but strike at the very heart of what our community stands for.

Of course, we are disappointed. But we are not deterred.

Together with our partners at Humanists International, we have responded to this challenge with agility, vision, and resolve to secure a new location. Today, we can happily announce the 2026 World Humanist Congress will take place August 7-9, 2026, in Ottawa, Canada.

It’s embarrassing to be a citizen of the United States anymore.

Would you like to visit the US next year?

There may be little point to these comments, because the people who need to hear them most are incapable of empathy.

Our bombing of Iran was a surprise attack, and the initial missiles flung at them by Israel was done under cover of negotiations between US diplomats and Iran. It was about as underhanded as you can get. But Trump was oblivious to the dishonor when he posted a comment on Truth Social, that is parodied here.

I deplore the Iranian theocracy, but you have to consider the people living under it.

Please, world, I would welcome the dissolution of the Trump/Republican regime that is wrecking our country, but don’t bomb me and claim you’re helping us.

Two days ago, Donald Trump was whining that he wasn’t going to win a Nobel Peace Prize, despite the fact that he had been so great at negotiating peace in the world.

He really, really wants a Nobel prize to put on his mantel. Obama got one, you know.

So yesterday he went golfing, and made an unconstitutional attack, an act of war, on Iran, sending B2 bombers to drop bunker-busters on Iranian nuclear sites. Not that he cares about the Constitution — it’s not as if Congress will suddenly grow a spine — or that he cares about loss of life, or that he cares that he has now embroiled the country in another massive, futile war in the Middle East, he’s got to prop up his belief that he’s a strong man. This is just standard petty tyrant shit, lashing out with violence because he’s not good enough to use American strength to do something right. Blow something up, sure, yeah, that works in the movies, so it’s what he’s going to do.

Actually, Obama negotiated a nuclear non-proliferation treaty with Iran.

Hello, 2003. I never wanted to see your ugly face again, with your baseless accusations of Weapons of Mass Destruction to justify wrecking another nation, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, wasting thousands of American lives, spreading more chaos throughout a region on the other side of the world. All because Trump wants a “Mission Accomplished” banner of his very own, or, somehow, a Nobel Peace Prize. I expect he will at least get a bump in his favorability ratings, because this is a rogue nation in which many of the people will shout “YEE-HAAAW” and cheer as the bombs fall on some other country.

We’ve got the rage virus burning through the US. And you all know what you’ve got to do to stop a zombie.

I have a son who is a major in the army — he worked his way up in the ranks, and he’s hoping to earn a promotion to lieutenant colonel sometime before he retires, but it gets harder and harder the farther up the ladder you climb. Next time I talk to him, I’ll have to tell him he’s been doing it all wrong. He’s about to be outranked.

The U.S. military recently announced that four executives from some of the top tech companies in Silicon Valley have joined the Army Reserve as direct-commissioned officers. The move is part of a push to speed up the adoption of technology in the military, but as the news outlet Task & Purpose points out, it’s pretty unusual.
The Army said in a press release that the four executives are Shyam Sankar, CTO at Palantir; Andrew Bosworth, CTO at Meta; Kevin Weil, Chief Product Officer of OpenAI; and Bob McGrew, an advisor at Thinking Machines Lab and former Chief Research Officer for OpenAI.

It’s not just that they’re being jumped up to high rank without earning it, but they also get a few special perks.

The four men are being commissioned at the high rank of lieutenant colonel as part of a program called Detachment 201: The Army’s Executive Innovation Corps. As Task & Purpose notes, the men will get to skip the usual process of taking a Direct Commissioning Course at Fort Benning, Georgia, and they won’t need to complete the Army Fitness Test.

They’re also only going to have to work for about 3 weeks a year, and they’re probably going to be doing everything remotely, so no real soldiers will have to salute them.

The new reservists will serve for about 120 hours a year, according to the Wall Street Journal, and will have a lot of flexibility to work remotely. They’ll work on helping the Army acquire more commercial tech, though it’s not clear how conflict-of-interest issues will be enforced, given the fact that the people all work for companies that would conceivably be selling their wares to the military. In theory, they won’t be sharing information with their companies or “participating in projects that could provide them or their companies with financial gain,” according to the Journal.

If they’re really patriotic, I say send them to bases in Kuwait to prepare for the invasion of Iran. Tip of the spear, baby.